


Anthurium

by tzingfung



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Fluff, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mutual Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 22:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10580574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzingfung/pseuds/tzingfung
Summary: Anthurium • [an-thoo r-ee-uh m]Anthurium symbolises hospitality, happiness and abundance.Two unlikely drifters find themselves in a town surrounded by the ocean where love was born from a bouquet of flowers.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [capt_toes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/capt_toes/gifts).



> Small, sweet and short- sorry.  
> The location and just the sweetness of this whole fic was inspired by Glossolalia's Valentine's Day ficlet they wrote earlier this year, I knew that would come back and bite me, in a good way, with inspiration!   
> I wrote this for my friend, Victoria for her birthday the other day, and I hope you all like it!
> 
> Have a great day!

Keith Kogane.  
A feisty boy that had a raven black mane for hair.   
Wild, careless and untameable.   
Just like him.  
He wore nothing but leather jackets and trodden in dirt-covered boots. And to top it all off, he had fingerless gloves to match.   
He also had a bike, of course, he had a bike.

So, wasn't it quite a surprise for everyone when he suddenly decided to hitch off to a small town in the middle of nowhere overlooking the glistening ocean, to well, work in a flower shop.   
Crazy right?   
Shiro thought so.

Though, he liked crazy.

Takashi Shirogane had also gotten a new apartment by the sea. The view, it captivated him, but mostly he wanted a _‘get out’_ card. He wanted to rid the past from himself, stretch far away from him as possible and somehow a view by the ocean had a sense of loneliness but a good one, a serene one, the type he needed, the type he soon got used to and known as home.

When he arrived at the end of the universe where land meets water and then nothing more, he stopped in the middle of the road, just like that he got out of the car and reached out his hand at the blue horizon and clenched at it as if he could hold it all within his grasp, and somehow the fact that he could not even fathom such a fact stirred something within him, obliterated into a burst of constellations and he felt for the galaxy once more, as if in some other lifetime he was living among the stars.

And though he had not met Keith yet, he already seemed to familiarise himself with him.

Which made their first meeting nothing like some stranger bumping into another stranger but an old soul meeting another old soul.   
They have met, surely they have had met before.   
Shiro thought he couldn't have felt so close, so familiar with someone who was new to him, but he did.

It was the birth of May.  
When nature was still frail and the warmth of sun shined weakly.   
Shiro had been in this new town, on this new turf for only a week, a mere youthfulness to his long stay there, though he didn't know that yet. After all, he was a guy always reaching for more, one lost boy to one lost city to the next.

The trees bloomed into an array of bright pink cherry blossoms right outside his door. Flowers fumed the air with that _oh so_ rosy tint and musky perfume and of course, of course, he inhaled and flared at the aroma and felt his whole soul become consumed and reborn.

It was only the early winks of dawn when the sky was bruised with small twinkles of shining bright light when he went on his daily run. This may as well be why he never met his neighbours before. Some part of him wanted to skip the social camaraderie as much as possible. But the other side of him wanted to grasp all straws at the end of every conversation he passed by.

He ran and he ran.  
Away from his quaking fears.  
Away from everyone that buried him alive with rebuttal and dismay.  
Away with him into the soft brushing of the wind, sweeping him off the ground. He closed his eyes and dreamed, dreamed for something more.

He took a detour into a cobbled old alleyway it mouthed out into a small collective of stores and coffee shops.   
Right on queue a growl grew deep rumbling his insides.

There was one coffee shop that caught his eye. It stood tall above all others towering the massacre of capitalism into its own dispute. A cherry on top coffee shop on the second floor above a dainty little flower shop.

Shiro wondered in, sweat dribbling down his forehead, eyes forlorn and misty. He stepped into a multicoloured palooza. Here sprang baby’s breath budding it's white bulbs, and there mingled in the thicket were soft bubbling carnations spreading its lovely wings of leaves protecting the smaller flowers that dotted about it.

Shiro wondered about, food a second thought now, gone behind the ambush of the thought of sudden beauty that sashayed before him.  
And it wasn't the flowers.

“Hey.”

He looked up, wiping his brow with the back of his hand, feeling heat’s fingertips smear his face with blush.

“Hi.”

He breathed back as he looked away from one pretty flower into what seemed to be another.

“Need help?”

_Yes, I think my breathing has stopped and my heart is about to sprint out of my chest._

“Uhh…”

The man with the ruthless black mullet pointed towards the bed full of flowers.

“You want a bouquet or something.”

_Maybe._

“Who is it for?”

_Maybe for you._

“Sir?”

“Uh yeah...” Shiro clears his throat and it felt like a thousand bees swarmed into his mouth and stuffed themselves deep down inside.

“What's your favourite?”

“My favourite?”

“I mean you know, what do you recommend.”

Shiro scratched the back of his head pointing to this and that needlessly, trying to bare some control over his nervous hands.

The other man debates over him, his finger brushed over his bottom lip in contemplation and Shiro’s heart skipped a few arrhythmic beats.

“The Ranunculus.”

The florist picks a few up within his grasp and sniffed them in a sort of habitual motion.

“Oh? And why’s that?”

“Each flower has a meaning and I guess this had struck me today.”  
  
A small smile riddles his lips before he took everything into one hunched up shrug and before Shiro started to part his lips to remove the words, _“and what's that?”_ The store attendant uttered some more.

“So have I won you over?”

_Yes, truly._

“You planning to choose these, right?”

_Oh. Right. The flowers._

Shiro takes them to have a deeper look and smiles up at him.

“Sure, they look beautiful and I trust your opinion.”

The florist rings them in and there was a point when the ringing and chime of the cash register halted and the silence grew as the passing of the gift left lingering touches between one warm scarred tattered hand to one cold metal one.

A struck of electricity ran down Shiro’s spine, he didn't need to feel the human touch, he sensed it and god did it make his whole body brew up a hurricane.

“Thanks.”

He looks down at the florist's name tag.

“Keith.”

Keith looks up from their hands that spasmed towards one and another like magnets itching to touch.

A lopsided smile drew a new picture on his face and wasn't it a refreshing one making all the newly blooming flowers among the both of them wilt in shame.

“Anytime.”

 

Shiro didn't believe in love at first sight but he did believe in gut feelings and if he was being perfectly honest, his gut was feeling a lot.

Though he never met Keith before then, he believed there was more than their first sighting, he could recognise him by touch alone through pitch darkness, he’d know it's him. How? He had no answer but he had every urge to find out. Anything to see more of that boy with the raven black mane.

It was another week of running down flightless stairs. That's what it felt like for Shiro anyway. Day after day running through his routine like clockwork, his eyes would itch towards the flowers he bought.

_Ranunculus._   
_Charm._   
_Attractiveness._

He looked it up.  
  
 _He was sending me a message._

Shiro heaved a stuttering breath that exhaled into a jittery nervous chuckle.

He went to go outside where the balcony stood above the curling strip of gravel road that slapped around the mountainous hill the apartment teetered upon and all of it dropped down into a deep pool of ocean.

The ocean again was what caught Shiro’s sight once more. He rolled his head up staring through his closed eyes into the radiant sun and his smile, his muscles, his whole body melted as the heat massaged into his exposed skin.

_Meow._

Shiro wriggled his nose, looked down in surprise at a dainty small kitten. She was a pretty one. Bright full eyes of wonder and curiosity it shadowed the ocean in two dark blue pools. Her stripes were jagged and brown and her white fur silky and shining against the brightness of the day.

“Oh, hello there, little one.”  
  
Shiro brushed the tip of the small kitten’s head with his bionic arm, she sniffed it and meowed approvingly before rubbing against him enthusiastically making him chuckle in delight.

“Hey Cat come here- fuck sorry if you're allergic or something.”

“No it's alright,” Shiro enjoyed the motor-like purrs that radiated out of the small creature, “Hey- Cat? You like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s or someth-”

Shiro paused because as he looked up he recognised the owner to the voice who was leaning against the balcony next door.

“You-”

“Huh. Oh... The sweaty guy with the Ranunculus.”

“Hey! I have you know I just came back from running that da-”

Keith cut Shiro off with a warm breathy laughter, only making Shiro shake his head and dismiss it all with a smile.

“What's your name anyway?”

Shiro picked up Cat and he stroked the small kitten as he walked towards the other edge of the balcony towards the cat’s owner.

“Shiro. I mean it's a nickname, everyone calls me that. You can call me that.”

_Blubbering, you're blubbering._

“Shiro, huh?” Keith picked up his kitten in one leather gloved hand and started rub against the cat’s ear offhandedly.

“Want to come over, Shiro? It's a nice hot day and I got a couple of beers already cooling.”

Shiro shrugged, “Hey, why not.”

He had the audacity to go all the way around to Keith’s door and not spring over the balconies as much as his eager heart wanted to comply.

And they spent the whole day playing with Cat, chugging down beer after beer and sinking in the sun’s rays while they spoke about nothing and everything all at once.

They did that a lot.   
Hanging about.  
At the flower shop.  
Car rides.  
In each other’s apartments…

They learnt a lot more of each other too. For Shiro, it felt like relearning all the things he somehow already knew all over again.   
It felt like he had forgotten someone a very long time ago and somehow reached his way back to them with renewed memories and a bittersweet love.

“You, Takashi may have a sadder past than mine and not a lot can say that.”

“Yeah?”

They were sitting close on the sofa, elbows bumping elbows, watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s solely because of that second meeting all those weeks back.

But it was more of background chatter, a theme for their conversation as it were.

Keith nudges him with a beer in hand before he took a sloppy slurping sip making Shiro laugh deeply as the sucking squeaking noise popped from the suction of Keith’s mouth.

“Do I win something for being the saddest human alive?”

Keith probably saw the anguish that was deeply clinging to that sentence or maybe it was showing in the shallowness of Shiro’s eyes but whatever it was, it brought up this moment and Shiro couldn't be more grateful.

“You get this.”

Keith placed his beer on the table with a distinctive clatter, like the break in the tension as he gently ran his fingers lightly from Shiro’s chest that sped up to the sharpness of his jaw, he then used as a hook to reel himself in closer.

They observed each other and Shiro couldn't help but analyse every spectacle of Keith like he was an oil painting hanging up in the great Le Louvre.

And before both of them could really prepare for it,   
he fell into a kiss. Sweet but crushing as much as the tides thrown itself to the jagged rocks outside. He was washed in euphoria and warmth. Keith’s tongue a ship cruising through the waves. Hands the soaring seagulls in the sky.

“I love you.”

Shiro broke away.  
His breathing unsteady, his body at a rough and broken angle.

Much like he was tossed aside there.   
And the thing is he was tossed there.  
By fate.

He had every ounce to stay in this ocean town for only a couple of weeks, he never thought it would really end up like this.

Staying for months on end, beside someone, the only one he could really call home. No matter where he was now, as long as he was beside him. He was home.

“I love you too, Keith.”


End file.
